In the past year, I have been both a mentee and have become a mentor. My long-distance mentor helped me to make the change from being a full-time information services manager to becoming a freelance researcher. The opportunity to learn from my mentor and to share my knowledge with my mentee has been an enriching experience. It's a pleasure to share with the FreePint community some insights into what to expect if you are considering becoming involved in a mentoring arrangement. For confidentiality, many of my examples will be generic, rather than drawn from specific discussions with my mentee. In turn, I am using my corporate library experience to a help a colleague from a public library work towards some of her professional goals. Read more...

There is an art and science to networking, whether it’s online or in the physical world. Linkedin (www.linkedin.com) is an online social networking site for professionals that can assist in the science of making connections, but there’s still the art to master. Linkedin is a cross between a people search site and a social networking site. While anyone can search for the public profile of registered subscribers, making contact to Linkedin users relies on a network of Linkedin colleagues. Based on the adage of six degrees of separation, users can contact other Linkedin subscribers through a network of connections that are described as 1st degree (people you know personally), 2nd degree (network of contacts your 1st degree contact knows), and 3rd degree (extended potential network of contacts that you may connect with through mutual connections). Read more...

Freepint, (2006) Issue No. 211, 10 August 2006 I have spent my career in large organisations, undertaking research for specialists. Being well informed is vital for specialists, and I have played a key role in that. However, specialists from small organisations are just as adept at keeping themselves up to date through their tightly focused […] Read more...

Gretta Rusanow has succeeded in writing a knowledge management book that is full of practical and helpful ideas that are matched with realistic and persuasive case studies. Rusanow has written numerous articles on knowledge management and is a frequent guest speaker on the topic. With a background in precedent management and consulting, she is now the Chief Executive of Curve Consulting, a firm that specialises in advising law firms and legal departments on knowledge management. In 2001, Rusanow undertook a comparative study of the knowledge management approach of law firms in Australia, the U.K. and U.S. to identify some of the key issues in advancing knowledge management in law firms. This was one of the first comparative studies that focussed on law firms, and although brief, it served to fill a gap in quality analysis of law firm knowledge management. Read more...

Strategic alliances are formed between law firms to gain from their business partner’s market, client or legal expertise in some way, yet very little research exists on how alliances use knowledge management to benefit from the knowledge held within the alliance. The following paper is based on the results of study that I undertook in 2002 for the Master of Business (Information Technology) at RMIT. The study looked at how law firms in competitive strategic alliances use knowledge management within their alliance compared to the knowledge management approach adopted by the individual firms that form the alliance. Read more...